Law School Question

<p>Thanks Zoosermom- It seems like it was just yesterday we "chatted" about UG admissions (ok that was for my d # 2), now it seems I am gathering some info for d # 1's "professional career".<br>
But I can really see the difference the 4 years make. For UG, I was doing all the reading and getting the info. This time around, I am just filling in the gaps of info needed for d.<br>
They really do grow-up and mature. Thank you all for the info.<br>
Again, her law school applications may wait a while, but it is very reassuring to believe that she has the #'s and background for Fordham as it would be a very solid back-up and a likely acceptance. </p>

<p>Zoos- now that I got your attention, would you recommend Fordham over some of the other T-14's like Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown etc. for the New York kid?? I think my gut tells me any T-14 and then Fordham (think that is the advice Roscoe gave his kid)
And might Cornell do better in the NYC recruitment area than some of the lower T-14's because of its NY connection?? Again my kid is lucky enough to have the LSAT/GPA to make this scenario a real possibility. Thanks again for all info and advice.</p>

<p>bizymom:</p>

<p>You and I have no disagreement about Yale. (a) I was counting judicial clerks as people who don't "actually go to work as lawyers coming out of law school", and taking account of the fact that nonprofit and government jobs suck up a number of the others. The relevance is that Yale isn't as plugged into the national private sector law firm recruiting market as other schools, because it just doesn't have the "product" to offer. The large firm where I worked for many years would have been happy to interview any Yale Law student who expressed an interest, but it stopped sending interview teams there 30 years ago because it so rarely produced any actual hires. (b) If you pay attention, it's clear I believe Yale is the #1 law school in the country (meaning the world, too). Of course Yale Law School graduates have no trouble getting jobs. The difference between Yale and Harvard is that, if you go to Missoula, Montana, or Flagstaff, Arizona, there are probably a couple Harvard Law graduates in town practicing law. Harvard graduates are everywhere. Outside of New York, Washington, and the faculty lounges of top law schools, it would be hard to get a bridge game up with Yale Law School alumni.</p>

<p>I never said my list was a 'ranking.' It represents my opinion, based on a good deal of direct personal experience over the years, and thus being familiar with several quality institutions that recruit and graduate students from outside of their immediate state or region. Clearly, for the Ivy Law schools and Stanford, no explanation is necessary. However, JHS and Jonri, I would recommend to you the latest listings in Martindale Hubbell for Manhattan corporate firms where, for example, you'll find more than a few associates and partners who are Washington and Lee alumni. Old boy firms like Davis Polk, Cadwalleder, Sullivan & Cromwell, Sterling & Simpson and others regularly recruited at W&L. My experience is dated, but I am confident that it is not irrelevant. If you have personal knowledge indicating otherwise, I'll stand corrected. I'm not posting to go all "rah-rah," for W&L Law, but a law school that sends its graduates to firms far afield, from NYC to ATL to Houston clearly enjoys a national reputation. No, it is not well recruited/solicited by firms in the Midwest, or West Coast, even though the Seattle firm I mentioned earlier, one of the largest in the west (115 lawyers), had an old W&L man as a lead partner, plus a former associate who is now a well respected Judge in Washington State.</p>

<p>I am loathe to focus on Manhattan corporate law firms, but they set the pace for recruting nationally in some regard. Thus, the schools they visit year-in and year-out are widely considered to be national schools. Yes, that is a select group and is too Ivy-centered (along with Stanford), in my opinion. It was an oversight by me to neglect George Washington as a school with a national reputation. And I don't believe that Boston College Law's reputation in "major" law offices throughout the U.S. exceeds that of GWU or W&L, or even Washington University. And if you're talking about scholarly legal accomplishment and innovation in law, no serious observer would minimize the U of Minnesota Law School. Ever hear of Katherine McKinnon? And yes, I know she now teaches in the Ivy League.</p>

<p>I hope no one interprets my focusing on NYC law firms as being elitist. But alot of us call NY our home.
As many of our kids are connected to this city, it is likely, they will decide to live and work near their family and friends. So we may as well make the best of it-</p>

<p>PS And what happened to Paco?? He started this whole thing. To get back to him
This info might have gotten lost in the translation- it's somewhere on P 2</p>

<p>Check out this book "Delaying the Real World" Make the World a Better Place by Colleen Kinder. If you check it out on Amazon, it will also lead you to other books on topic. It may give you some ideas of programs to partake in if you do decide to take a year off between college and Law school. Momof 2, you might want to check it out also. I do not know if it has anything specific about civil rights law, but it might get you guys thinking in that direction and if there are any programs to pursue.<br>
Amazon had other books along that topic too.</p>

<p>Not only have I heard of Catharine MacKinnon, my wife and I have known her since she was a law student, and I studied with her during a stint when she visiting at Stanford. She has been on the faculty at the University of Michigan since the mid-80s. She did begin her career at Minnesota, but I don't think she spent a semester in residence there after, say 1980.</p>

<p>(Nothing against Minnesota, by the way, which is a perfectly good law school, but one whose appeal is largely limited to the upper Midwest.)</p>

<p>None of the state law schools outside of Michigan and Virginia will get you serious consideration, in and by themselves, out of market in one of the nation's large cities (Top 15, including Dallas, Miami, Cleveland, Millwaukee, Seattle, etc.) The Top 10 privates (Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, Georgetown, Northwestern, Yale, Penn, Stanford) will get you an interview in any of them, as well as their local market. If you are keyed into one local market, like NY, go to NYU (where just about everyone is there because they want to be in NY, so it's an outlier for this discussion) and you're in if you do reasonably well but go to a Fordham, etc. and you need to do very well (top 10%) to have a crack at a top firm. If you want to stay local and go to SMU or UT for Dallas; U of Miami or UF for Miami; Marquette or UW for Milwaukee; USC or UCLA for LA, etc. but only go to those schools if you are sure you want to stay around. </p>

<p>In any of those markets, any level of student from a Harvard, Yale or Stanford can walk in and write his or her ticket and many do take that route. In New York, D.C. and Boston and, to a lesser extent San Francisco and LA, you will generally need to be top half of your HYS class to land with a big firm. You can still get to NY or DC from anywhere, but you better be number one at an SMU or a Tulane or a Minnesota and have a lot more going for you to get a job with a top firm.</p>

<p>OT: (You know those threads where people complain about grad student TAs at Ivy League schools, and jerks like me respond by bragging about how great our TAs were at Yale? Kitty MacKinnon was my wife's TA in a course on the history of feminism in 1976.)</p>

<p>redcrimblue: I don't disagree with you a lot, but I think you're forgetting about Boalt Hall (UC Berkeley), which has almost as much national status as Michigan or Virginia.</p>

<p>btw, Catharine MacKinnon (so spelt) does not teach at an Ivy (she's at Michigan), nor does she make anyone--serious or not--think of U of Minnesota as a school of "legal accomplishment and innovation). She is one of hundreds of law school professors who are good, productive scholars, but no one whom anyone outside of law school academics has even heard.</p>

<p>Glad you know her. I may have misspoke her current position and I should have double checked it. By the way, she was on the UMinnesota law faculty as late as 1986 [and, as you might know, endured insulting complaints from males in her courses on law & gender, etc., classes which were widely observed an reported upon at the time]. We'll just have to politely disagree about the national reputation [or alleged lack thereof] of UMinnesota Law School. It's much more than "a perfectly good law school."</p>

<p>Washington--It's kind of the point that lawyers "politely disagree" about the reps of the law schools below the top 14. Almost any lawyer or judge in the US will agree that the top 14 are the top 14. Go below that and regional bias kicks in. </p>

<p>I agree with JHS that Boalt is up there in the top 14 and has a national rep. It allows you to become a California resident and pay in-state tuition for years 2 and 3--or at least it has within the last couple of years, and I think it still does. That's one reason it's been able to attract more OOS students than you'd expect. </p>

<p>W &L is a MUCH smaller law school than Boston College and looking at the stats, the student bodies are just about equal--those at BC seem to have UG GPA's that are a bit higher; those at W&L have LSAT a bit higher. Not a whole heck of a lot of difference though. I wouldn't include BC as a national law school, but IMO it's every bit as national as W&L. There are partners at major law firms in NYC who are Boston College grads. I'm biased because I went to law school in the Northeast at a time when BC was considered a better law school than BU. A generation earlier, BU was considered better. Now, once again BU is considered better. Because I'm from the Northeast and practice in NYC and at of an age when if you were from New England and didn't get into Harvard, you went to BC, I probably am biased in favor of it. I've only met one attorney from W&L practicing in NYC. I've met a larger # from BC. </p>

<p>The 2008 rankings are out and once again W&L is one place above Boston College. In some past years, it was often the other way around.</p>

<p>BTW, the only surprise in the 2008 rankings of the top law schools, at least to me, is that USNews has moved UPenn up to tie with CCN. Otherwise, the top 3 are the top 3; CCN and UPenn come next, and 8-14 remain the same.</p>

<p>"Fordham over some of the other T-14's like Duke, Northwestern, Georgetown etc. for the New York kid?? I think my gut tells me any T-14 and then Fordham (think that is the advice Roscoe gave his kid)
And might Cornell do better in the NYC recruitment area than some of the lower T-14's because of its NY connection?? "</p>

<p>Alot of recruitment success here has to do with connections. There are many lawyers here with connections at Cornell and Fordham, so they have an edge. If she really wants to come to NY, I'd put Georgetown below Yale, Harvard, Columbia, NYU, Fordham, but I wouldn't even put Duke or Northwestern on my list. Virginia and Michigan are good, as is Stanford.</p>

<p>Jonri, your comment about differences of opinion reminded me of the time I met the late Congressman Frank McCloskey from Indiana, when he was Mayor of Bloomington. This was a national public policy forum that I attended during my senior year of college. Mr. McCloskey and I had a mutual aquaintance who had recently accepted an academic position at Indiana University School or Law. McCloskey's eyes lit up and began to relate the virtues of Indiana Law and encouraged me (then a resident of the northeast) to apply. To my incredulous ears he said, "We'll, it's a great place and probably number 2 or 3 behind Harvard law." No joking! After that, I always had a soft place in my heart (but not a soft head), for Mr. McCloskey.</p>

<p>Thanks Zoosermom-</p>

<p>I think we scared Paco away. Maybe s/he is re-thinking Law school after reading this thread!!</p>

<p>I had no problem with the NY market coming from Vanderbilt. With respect to big NY firms with a national perspective, going to a school in the USC/UCLA/Vanderbilt/Texas bloc is as advantageous as Fordham. Where there is a possible advantage for Fordham is with respect to somewhat smaller firms. Being there locally to jump on such jobs and work there during the year is helpful. Of course, you should keep in mind that the aforementioned bloc of schools is higher rated and preferrable to Fordham outside NY.</p>

<p>"With respect to big NY firms with a national perspective, going to a school in the USC/UCLA/Vanderbilt/Texas bloc is as advantageous as Fordham."</p>

<p>I have worked and still do, at the absolute top firms and disagree with that statement. My experience and that of my professional organization doesn't hold that to be true.</p>

<p>"Of course, you should keep in mind that the aforementioned bloc of schools is higher rated and preferrable to Fordham outside NY."</p>

<p>Absolutely true.</p>

<p>Thanks guys- that is a great point. Smaller more "local NYC based" firms might see Fordham as a plus- whereas the NYC based "National Firms" may still give the nod to Vanderbilt, USC etc. And if there is a possibility that she'll leave the NY area, she may also benefit by going to a top 20.
That thought will definitely stay on my radar.</p>

<p>Well- with a bit of luck, she'll get an acceptance to Georgetown or Cornell, (and maybe a few others) and all these questions will be moot.
At this point, I don't think we'll speculate much more- she'll decide when she is going to apply- and then the schools will make their decision. Based on that, she'll see what choices she ACTUALLY has. </p>

<p>Willow- did you enjoy your time at Vanderbilt and are you from the NY region?? D was planning to go to Bonaroo (?) and check out Vanderbilt on the way back- But her plans changed and she went to another concert in NYS instead. I was relieved as the NY concert was a heck of alot closer than driving down to Nashville. </p>

<p>Again- thank you all so much for your opinions.
Marny</p>

<p>I requested a Post grad parent forum as it seems there are alot of us who are now looking at Grad school programs. If you think it is a good idea, please post a comment under "Hi, Moderator" (I probably should have thought of a more catchy name.)
If we don't ask for it, we'll never get it.
Thanks</p>

<p>thanks, marny1. Good idea!</p>

<p>BTW, S got his LSAT score yesterday. Scored a 175, so he's looking solid in that part of the equation, if only he would put a little more focus into his gpa for the next 2 years. He says he wants to stay in California, preferably Berkeley, but I think Boalt will be too much of a reach for him. UCLA is looking good. I can't remember if that's T14, but a friend of mine's son just graduated from UCLA law, passed the bar on the first try and is working for our local DA. S is more interested in civil rights law, but I don't know if law schools have any specialties or if one is better for a type of law than another. Can anyone enlighten me on this?</p>

<p>Mom- your son did super terrific- With a 175, he should get into practically any school he wants. I am SURE (fingers crossed) he'll get into Boalt. Do not overlook Stanford either. And UCLA is definitely looking good.
Congrats to your son.
Not at all familiar with Ca. schools. But in checking out Law School websites, they often have a listing of Clinic Programs etc. That might give you some indication if there are "special programs" in the area of Civil Rights Law at a particular school.</p>

<p>As was posted earlier and as all modern (last 40 years or so, the post L.LB period) law graduates know, law school is fundamentally the study of the foundation courses in the first two years. Yes, you can take a specialty course or two in that time, but most law students learn and become familiar with the basics and then pursue specific interests (or rather, their future employers' interests) after getting the degree [in addition to any seminars, internships or work outside of the classroom].</p>

<p>As for civil rights law, Constitutional law is required at probably every American law school.</p>